Tawana Brawley Rape Hoax

Twenty-five years after accusing an innocent man of rape, Tawana Brawley is finally paying for her lies.

In 1987, Sharpton made himself a national figure when he organized protests after Brawley was found inside a plastic bag behind an apartment house in Wappingers Falls, N.Y. She was covered with feces and racial epithets smeared on her body and accused various white men, including Steven A. Pagones, a former Dutchess County assistant district attorney.

Sharpton attacked Pagones and the other men with Ms. Brawley’s lawyers, Alton H. Maddox Jr. and C. Vernon Mason. A grand jury eventually found that the account was a hoax and Pagones successfully sued Sharpton, Maddox, Mason and Brawley.

Sharpton has never apologized for his role and failed to pay the damages until various businessmen came forward to pay the damages for him in 2001. -Jonathan Turley

Twenty-five years after accusing an innocent man of rape, Tawana Brawley is finally paying for her lies. Last week, 10 checks totaling $3,764.61 were delivered to ex-prosecutor Steven Pagones — the first payments Brawley has made since a court determined in 1998 that she defamed him with her vicious hoax... She still owes Pagones $431,000 in damages.

Rev. Al Sharpton gave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “the creeps,” he wrote in his diary. He goes on to call Sharpton a “buffoon” who has never escaped the “stench” of his advocacy for Tawana Brawley, the black Dutchess County teen who fabricated a story about six white men raping her in 1987.

After seven months of examining police and medical records and listening to the testimony of over one hundred witnesses, the grand jury determined that Tawana's charges were false and that her condition when found had been self-inflicted.

Sharpton was a spokesman for Brawley, a black teenager whose claim of kidnapping and rape at the hands of six white police officers was dismissed after a grand jury determined their was no evidence to support it. Sharpton has never apologized for his role in the case, which inflamed racial tensions in New York and nationally.

Sharpton took up Brawley's cause and defended her refusal to cooperate with prosecutors, saying that asking her to meet with New York's attorney general (who had been asked by Gov. Mario Cuomo to supervise the investigation) would be like "asking someone who watched someone killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr. Hitler." According to the Associated Press, Sharpton and Brawley's lawyers asserted "on 33 separate occasions" that a local prosecutor named Steven Pagones "had kidnapped, abused and raped" Brawley. There was no evidence, and Pagones was soon cleared.

The nation was stunned in 1987 by an African-American teenager’s accusation that she had been brutally gang raped by a group of white men, including a local prosecutor and a local police officer. Those accusations turned out to be an elaborate hoax — and decades later, one of the men wrongfully accused in the fabricated horrific crime is finally receiving reparations payments.

Eleven years after Tawana Brawley’s sensational story was disproved, former prosecutor Steven Pagones successfully sued Brawley, her attorneys and Rev. Al Sharpton — who had gotten involved with the case — for slander, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Now the falsely accused former Dutchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones has tracked down Brawley living in Virginia and working as a nurse. It is 25 years after the sordid affair was in the national spotlight. He is seeking $190,000 in damages against Brawley, now 40. She is now beginning to pay back the amount due to Pagones. -Jonathan Turley

Rev. Al Sharpton would not admit the Tawana Brawley rape case he drove to national prominence was a hoax on Morning Joe Tuesday, saying he had no regrets getting involved and would respond the same way if a woman today made similar claims.

Brawley claimed she was kidnapped and gang-raped by white men, including a police officer and local prosecutor, in 1987. The story became a national sensation and was a career-maker for Sharpton, who was largely unknown at the time.

But after a long investigation revealed Brawley’s claims to be false, it was dropped. -Washington Free Beacon Staff